by Kevin Burton Christmas brings with it a combination of the most modern of gifts under the tree and the most old-timey of words used to sing about it. Merriam-Webster dictionary has compiled a list of words we seldom encounter outside of Christmas songs. We bring you more of those today, and we …
Category Archives: Words
Archaic Words From Christmas Songs
by Kevin Burton Uh-oh, I think I may be archaic. Our friends at Merriam-Webster dictionary served up a timely platter of cookies this week, a list of “archaic” words we know from Christmas songs. Well I just used one of these words last week on Page 7! In order to keep this …
These Palindromes Get You Coming And Going
by dictionaryscoop.com We all remember palindromes from our childhood years. Funny sentences that read the same forward as backward. Some are short, some incredibly long, and while some do make sense, most of them are surrealist, to say the least. From the whimsical “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!” to the succinct …
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12 Words We Need In The English Language
by Kevin Burton What a glorious toybox is language. Words and their shadings and peculiarities have been one of the few constants I can count on in life. The little sticks-and-stones bromide which states “words will never hurt me” is false in its context. Words can hurt a lot when used improperly, especially …
Dictionary Words Are Funky, Stylish And Cool
by Kevin Burton If the 60s were groovy, the 70s were nothing if not funky. The funk was everywhere then, beginning with music, first seeping then flowing into just about everything else. The funk was the soup we swam in. But I was a little surprised to see funky show up on …
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Uptown Words For The Stylish Wordsmith
by Kevin Burton So you read the headline “uptown words” and your mind immediately goes to Uptown Girl, the Billy Joel song, right? One could take that song as a celebration of an uptown girl. I take it as the celebration of the virtues of a downtown man. “That’s what I am,” Joel …
Dictionary Highlights Man’s Best Friend
by Kevin Burton I have suspended my devotion to cats long enough this week to share some dictionary words from Merriam-Webster that pertain to dogs. Before we continue with their list, here is one the dictionary curiously left out – dog days. Dog days is “the period between early July and early …
Merriam-Webster: Words Inspired By Dogs
by Kevin Burton If you read this blog regularly, you know I am a cat guy. A cat whisperer, my wife says. Today we’ll give equal time to dog lovers, by revealing some of the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s list of words inspired by dogs. According to Forbes, 44.5 percent of US households have …
More Words For Crimes And Misdemeanors
by Kevin Burton Children utter phrases such as “cross my heart, hope to die” to self-administer a kind of playground oath. But it’s not binding. Today our friends at Merriam-Webster bring us words dealing with what we say, or refuse to say, under a legal oath in a court of law. But …
Words From The Wrong Side Of The Law
by Kevin Burton Some of the entries on today’s word list from Merriam-Webster I learned as a wee lad, by following the news about the federal government. If it hadn’t been for the Nixon Administration and the Watergate scandal, I would have thought hush money was money a parent spends to keep the …